Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2004SYR03
Purchase Details
11x17-inches, printed on heavy weight (100-pound) Hammermill cover paper. We package each print with a piece of chipboard in a clear plastic sleeve.
You also receive…
An information page with photos of the artist and poet, and hand-written comments from each.
Medium- and large-format posters are available by custom order. Contact us for details.
Poem Inspiration Location
St. Paul's Cathedral
poster information
Description
St. Paul's Cathedral
sun—drenched copper roof singing
Syracuse vespers
It was late summer, and I was driving by downtown, maybe on a street, maybe even on 690. And St. Paul's had just put in a new roof. The copper hadn't turned green at all. It was at sunset, so the roof was a bright orange honey-colored copper, with the sun blasting on it. It caught my eye, and I think I started composing some lines right away. I wrote them down when I got home.
Vespers is evening prayer, usually sung. I don't think they were conducting an evening prayer, but they could have been. In my mind, that's what it evoked. So I think this was my way of trying to marry the image of a beautiful, arresting sight with a kind of prayer. Call it a prayer of awareness or thanksgiving for that moment.
I like my work to have a lot of light and shadow and contrast—play between light and dark values. The idea of the sun-drenched copper roof contrasted by morning shadows caught me, and I've always wanted to do a painting of a church. My grandfather does a lot of work in Cortland for St. Mary's Roman Catholic church, so seeing a poem about a church also made me think of him.
After locating St. Paul's, I took a few hours to walk around the church, taking pictures. I wanted to capture the copper roof, and make the image as appealing, aesthetically, as I found the church to be.
The view I finally created the poster from has some spiritual symbolism. I like the way the church towers above the shadows of the natural environment, and how bright it is at the top, against the blue sky.